Gang plays mind game to loot cash

Be focused while carrying cash. Diversion of mind can cost you currency notes.

Diverting attention of people, a gang has been fleeing with bags containing cash of late. At least three such incidents have been reported recently.

The bike-borne gang members’ latest victim was Diku Kumar, an employee of a contractor. A resident of Parsa Bazaar, he was robbed of Rs 50,000 on Fraser Road around 11.30am on Tuesday.

Diku was supposed to hand the cash to his employer, Dilip Kumar.

He reached Fraser Road around 11.15am, parked his car in front of an upscale hotel and kept waiting inside his vehicle for Dilip.

After a while, two youths riding a motorbike dropped a few currency notes in front of Diku’s vehicle.

As he came out of his vehicle to collect the notes in the denomination of Rs 10, the youths pounced upon his cash-filled briefcase in the car and sped away.

Diku realised his folly only after the youths vanished. He immediately informed his employer about the incident, who reported the matter to Kotwali police station.

A similar modus operandi was adopted in the case of driver Amit Kumar, who was robbed of Rs 10,000 cash and a laptop on July 26.

A resident of Beur on the outskirts of Patna, he was waiting for his employer — Sudhir Kumar Roy — inside the car near a hotel on Buddha Marg.

All of a sudden, the gang members surfaced and scattered 13 currency notes in the denomination of Rs 10 in front of his vehicle and raised an alarm. As Amit came out of the car to count the notes, one of the teenaged youths laid his hands on a bag in the rear seat of the car Amit was driving and escaped. Roy was taken aback when he came to know about the incident.

A couple of days earlier, two bike-borne youths foxed a 65-year-old man near Kumhrar in Patna City using the same modus operandi. The victim, a retired government employee, was on his way home after withdrawing Rs 14,000 from a bank.

Police are yet to crack any of the three cases. Patna senior superintendent of police (SSP) Manu Maharaaj said the identity of the gang has been ascertained and a detailed strategy has been chalked out to contain such crimes. “The members of the gang are professionals, who target a particular town or city for a specified period. We have gathered detailed information about their modus operandi,” he told The Telegraph, adding that the members of the gang were “specialists” in diverting attention of people.